Angels vs Demons
by emillythestrange
Summary: What does Edward think about when he's away from Bella during the time he's gone from New Moon? And why does he think that Bella doesn't love him anymore? Is Rosalie at fault, or is he to blame as well?


I needed her. I needed my Bella. My sweet, loving, beautiful Bella. The only woman in my life who could make me feel truly happy, filled with love. The only thing that was in my mind while we were together was how to pleasure her, keep her safe, keep her with me. That, and of course, my mind was always reveling about her beauty. About her beautiful, expressive dark, brown eyes that could somehow see the inside of me. Not just my outward looks, like other women so often did. They took one glance at my vampire enhanced looks and marked me as their prey, whereas Bella looked into my mind, my heart, and she even said that she loved my soul. I didn't have one. 

And yet, I'd lied to her. I'd blasphemed against our love, told her that I had no need of her anymore. As if that was true! As if there were any way at all that my life would be brilliant, survivable without her. Impossible. But she'd believed me. Believed me with all her heart, and I had made no moves to tell her the truth. The truth. The truth that I still loved her. That I still loved her, and always will love her. 

"You can go back to her, you know," the voice in the back of my mind urged. "You can still go to her house, her window, beg for her to take you back and tell her the truth." 

And there was another voice. A darker one. I felt like one of those people on television who had a devil on one side, and an angel on the other. But this time, both of those devils and angels were me. I was the devil when I was in my vampire state. The angel was me, when I was a man, the man who loved Bella. The man who had lied to her, and now regretted it so that he could save her. Save her life, and save her soul, for we both knew, the devil and the angel, they both knew that there would be no way for her to stay human and stay with me. For, I would never, ever willingly let her go off on her own through death without me by her side, and with my sins, with my wrongdoings, we would probably never meet in the afterworld when I would burn in hell and Bella would have a lovely life in heaven. 

The darker voice had said, "But what if she's moved on? Dating Newton? What if she hates you for leaving her when she needed you most? But even worse, would be if you went back to Forks, and find her not there. If she moved back to Florida? Or even if you go back to her, beg for her to take you back, and yet, she refuses? Because if you think about it, these are more likely to happen than what that other guy is saying." 

All of what the darker-side-of me had said swirled around in my head, almost making me dizzy in the stuffy, airless, dark, moldy attic filled with dust-bunnies and rats? But the thought of returning to my Bella —. 

"No, not MY Bella anymore. She could be somebody else's Bella now. She could be Newton's Bella now." The voice was back in my head. I refused to believe it, even though I knew very well that this could be true. That what this voice was saying could be very well true, and I couldn't deny it. 

And yet, the angel's voice debated back. "You were a fool. An imbecile, yes, but she needs you, just like you need her. Her act of letting you go, of believing you even though you lied to her about not loving her anymore — just proves her love to you. Do you truly think that Bella, the one woman you truly loved, who'd shunned all of the other boys in her school, would fall for some demon like Mike Newton?"

But no matter what the angel side of me said, my mind was already snared by the dark side of myself. The devil side. 

"She doesn't love you, stay here, hunt Victoria, leave her life alone. Just the way you planned, and someday, she'll have children, she'll have a family of her own. Her own human family, and she won't have any risks of getting killed by you, your family, or anything mythical ever again. Just what you wanted. Just the way you planned . . . ." The voices left me in peace, the minds of men plaguing me to no end, even though I stopped tuning it out, blocking it, and let the voices of random people run around in my head. 

I was scared. I didn't want to admit it, but I was scared. I needed Bella. I needed my sweet, beautiful angel, with her brown eyes, full, red lips, tiny hands, beautiful soul. That's all that mattered. Her beautiful soul, but what if that soul, what if her heart was owned by another man? I'd only held her heart in mine for a short period of time before I gave it back without knowing whether or not she wanted me to keep it. 

Did she want me to love her? Or did she just keep me around for safety purposes? But that would be ridiculous. To depend on a blood-crazed vampire for safety was ridiculous. And the times when I'd brought her to my home, the meadow, stayed in bed with her, told her that I would always love her to the end of time . . . had those times come to nothing at all?

The angel voice came back, "You know she loves you. You know you love her. And you know you'd be doing the right thing if you went back to her, begged . . . did whatever you needed to do to get her back. To get her heart back into yours." 

Part of me agreed. To have Bella back in my life, physically, it would be much, much better. It would be better mentally too, with her in my life, with my beautiful Bella in my life full of hatred and danger. Better for me, to cope, to survive, but not for her. During the times that I'd been with her, she'd been more than accident crazed. The van, the rapists who had stalked her in that alley in Port Angeles, James . . . me. I'd thought that it was her bad luck that had caused all of these "accidents", but then, I'd realized that it was what I, who had brought those dangers into her life. James had tried to kill her because of me. I had destroyed her life because of me. Because of the devil in me. Because I, Edward Cullen, was a demon. 

But something had changed inside me while I was with Bella. While I had held her heart. Before I'd met her, I'd been solitary and independent. I needed noone but myself for survival, and that wasn't going to change. But it _did_ change during the short time that I was with her. It did change when we'd openly expressed our love to each other. The man in me had overshadowed the demon in me, and although it was hard, it was doable. 

And I needed something to take this pain off my chest. This gaping hole where my heart had used to be. No — not my heart — it was Bella's heart in me that had filled me up, making me realize what a pleasure it was to have her in my life. 

And now that she was gone, I truly, truly missed it. _Absence makes the heart grow fonder. _But I didn't care for absence. I had been away from my angel for half a year for Christ's sake. And dammit, I was going to get her back. 

So the angel in me did win after all . . . ._ Love overpowers all._

I got up, my bronze hair brushing against the rough, splintered wood ceiling of the attic. My sudden movement made the rats that were in here with me squeak, and huddle together in groups in the corners. But I got up, my limbs feeling sore and stiff, like I hadn't moved in a long time. I was sure that my eyes were black, that I'd need all of my control to walk outside in the society. And societies had people in them. And people had blood in them, blood that I could drink. I needed control. I needed to hunt soon, if I was planning to be near Bella, the angel

I'd just taken one step in the pitch-black room towards the dimly lit outside of the attic door, when my phone rang. 

"I have time," I thought. But I was very anxious to get to my precious Bella. My beautiful, beautiful Bella would soon be in my arms once again, if the angel side in me was right. Only if, though, only if, but even that was enough to keep me alive, in a degree of happiness until I could finally look at those ifs as truths. 

I pulled my phone out of the back pocket of my jeans, and looked at the caller. Out in the open, was a name that I would have never guessed to ever call me in any time in my existence. 

Rosalie 


End file.
